Online taxation and fintech software provider Clear on Wednesday said it has acquired supply chain supply chain financing technology firm Xpedize.
The deal value stood at around Rs 100 crore (approximately $13.2 million), as per sources.
Clear said that the buyout will help the platform foray into small and mid-size enterprises (SME) credit and business-to-business (B2B) payments.
It is expected to process Rs 1000 crore gross merchandise value (GMV) by the end of FY22.
Xpedize said it will now be rebranded as Clear Invoice Discounting. The artificial intelligence-machine learning based firm offers suppliers access to liquidity and instant working capital.
The financing platform is led by former Citibank corporate bankers Regan Mithani and Deepak Gugnani and was backed by marquee investors including HDFC Capital and YourNest Venture Capital.
“This acquisition speeds up our journey towards enabling these two lifelines for Indian businesses. Xpedize platform is already running with multiple large enterprises and allows them to pay their suppliers faster.
We believe that a separate vertical within Clear will encompass all our technology-enabled financial services and help us quickly scale to serve millions of suppliers,” said Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO, Clear.
“A large chunk of businesses in India use our GST compliance suite, and these customers will reap the benefits of the network effect. Higher supplier participation, zero overheads for enterprises, and better discount rate discovery are our three focus areas to disrupt this space,” he added.
Clear allows individuals to file income tax returns and build wealth through investment in mutual funds. Through its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based firm it also helps small and large businesses, tax professionals, by offering products and services such as invoicing, GST, range of managed services, Income Tax and TDS solutions, among others.
This year in January, Clear raised undisclosed funding from global product and engineering veterans including Aparna Chennapragada, chief product officer of American stock trading platform Robinhood.
In October 2021, Clear raised $75 million (around Rs 573 crore) as a part of its Series C fundraise led by Kora Capital with global fintech Stripe, Alua Capital, and Think Investments. The platform acquired Y Combinator-backed enterprise payments startup Ybanq in the same year.
